DRIVER MONITORING DEVICE AND METHOD USING CRITERION BASED ON SURROUNDING VEHICLES

A driver monitoring device has a processor which acquires surrounding vehicle information, surrounding road environment information and driver line-of-sight direction information, performs autonomous driving or driving assistance of a host vehicle based on the surrounding vehicle information and the surrounding road environment information, determines whether the driver's visual recognition in a direction of travel of the host vehicle is sufficient, alerts the driver when the driver's visual recognition in the direction of travel of the host vehicle is not sufficient, changes non-visual recognition determination criterion used for determining that the driver's visual recognition in the direction of travel of the host vehicle is not sufficient; and changes the non-visual recognition determination criterion so that the greater the number of the stopped or decelerating surrounding vehicles in the surrounding region, the easier it becomes to be determined that the driver's visual recognition is not sufficient.